Flow
by That Sunflower Chick
Summary: April's meditation session leads to clarity of heart. Takes place when her dad was still a bat mutant. TMNT is the property of folks who have lots and lots of money. Not me.


When the piles of road-blackened snow disappeared, when warmth once more surrounded the city like the hug of a just-returned friend, when new green finally burst from bare tree branches, April O'Neil took a bus to a spot just outside of town, a place from a childhood memory. The glistening Hudson stretched in front of her as she stepped off the bus and blinked against the sun, as bright and new as everything else in this change of season. Blanket rolled under her arm, she strode past dog walkers and joggers and children to where the river flowed with a smooth even sound like a sigh of relief.

Spreading her blanket on the bank where she and her father had picnicked and fished long ago, April pulled scents deep into her lungs: sweet breeze and fresh water and wet earth. Kicking off her sandals, she sat and folded her legs into a lotus pose. She rested her hands, palms up and open, on top of her knees; she set her eyes on the horizon over the water, and breathed.

A thought spun off from her memory, a disturbing thought: she would never fish or picnic with her father again. He was a horrible mutation, a twisted accident, a bat-thing with glowing green veins of alien mutagen like a map of trails to hell on his skin. April shook her head. No. Donnie would discover a retro-mutagen; he would dose her father with it; her dad would return to normal. And she hadn't come here to focus on sadness. She imagined Leo scolding her with his blue eyes full of a gentle sternness—_come on,_ _what are you thinking, using stressful images for meditation?_—and allowed a smile to reach her face. _Let positive thoughts flow, _she imagined him saying.

In the middle of her next deep breath, tiny movements in front of her stole her focus. Looking toward the riverbank, she noticed a turtle digging in the mud. Over and over it scooped a hole into the mud with its claws, over and over the hole filled with water and the turtle crawled to another area to dig again, tirelessly. Like Donnie, she thought.

Donatello. She had seen him, over and over, spending night after night in his lab, hunched over his computer, or an array of beakers and mutagen containers, or piles of charts and textbooks and paper covered with scrawled equations. Sometimes he fell asleep at the desk or table, and one of his brothers would direct him to go to bed or cover him with a blanket so he could sleep as comfortably as possible while face down in his work. Sometimes he talked to her with a distant-sounding voice and eyes bleary with exhaustion. Sometimes…

_Positive thoughts, April_.

Sometimes she watched Donnie work, and the tip of his tongue protruded adorably from his mouth as he lost himself in concentration. Sometimes she helped him work, and her fingers brushed his when he asked her to hand him one of his tools, and he would blush furiously and look everywhere but into her eyes. Sometimes she went into his lab to check on him, and his tired eyes brightened and his weary face lifted into a gap-toothed grin of pure joy just because of her presence. She felt a warmth in her heart that had nothing to do with the spring sun.

_Better._

April rolled her eyes, but smiled at the same time. Her internal motivational self-talk always spoke in Leo's voice these days.

Donatello. Donnie. She coaxed a picture of him into her mind again, closed her eyes, and breathed. The joy and warmth in her heart spread throughout her body, down to her fingers and the tips of her toes.

Much_ better. Now how about those three words he wants to hear you say? You want to tell him, don't you? Come on, April, you know you do. Let it flow._

April sat up straight, jolted from her calm state. _Shut up, Leo, _she mentally commanded her inner voice, imagining herself poking him, however ineffectively, in the side of his plastron.

The turtle in front of her finished digging and lumbered away, disappearing beneath the river's surface, slipping away with the water's current.

If she didn't tell Donnie how she felt, at least how she thought she felt, would he do the same—finish his work and just move on? Would he give up on trying to be with her, on trying to change their relationship into a romantic one, when it was so obvious that was what he'd wanted ever since he first met her? Was that what she even wanted? Was that why she'd told Casey the two of them weren't right for each other, that she just wanted to be his friend? April's thoughts and emotions spun in her head like swirling eddies of water drawing up muck from below, clouding everything.

_Some meditation session._ She imagined Leo's face peering down at her, his mouth set in a hard disappointed line.

The Hudson did not flow in circles, at least not on the surface, at least not right now. There, it was calm and smooth and shining, like a pane of glass, like a window, a window she hoped to look through and see herself. She focused on the water's surface and breathed.

There were three words Donnie wanted to hear her say. She'd thought them often enough, but they remained unvoiced, shadowy, uncertain, somewhere in her heart. _I believe in you, I care about you, I could never forget you. _So close, all of those things. She'd said them all to him at one time or another, and she meant them. Did she mean the others? The three words she'd thought about saying?

The turtle came back and started digging again, tirelessly, and suddenly she knew.

Her homework finished, her dinner dishes cleaned, and the sewer navigated, April O'Neil stepped through the turnstiles and into the cool white light emanating from the lair of her turtle family. Three of the brothers surrounded her with smiles and warm hugs.

"You missed training, Red. What's your deal?" Raphael's gruff, demanding tone didn't quite cover the flicker of worry April caught in his eyes.

"I know, _Red_," she shot back at him, tugging the tails of his mask. "But I had some thinking to do."

"Thinking? Or meditating?" One of Leonardo's eye ridges lifted. "Have you been practicing those techniques we worked on?"

"_Hai, sensei_," April said, sticking her tongue out at him. "My thoughts were flowing. I couldn't just leave. I'll go apologize to Master Splinter later. I need to talk to someone else first."

Michelangelo's eyes sparkled as his smile made the room even brighter. "Yeah, Mr. Someone Else is in the lab. And he totally wants to hear what you're gonna say."

April took a step back. "How did you know—"

"I've known for, like, ever." Mikey squeezed her hands. "You glow, girl." Spinning her around to face the hall to the lab, he gave her a gentle push she no longer needed.

Down the hall, around the corner, and into the lab's doorway April trotted. She stood there and observed quietly and took in the sight of Donatello from behind, working as usual. Soft green light surrounded him, light from a mutagen canister on the table where he sat, light that coaxed her toward him like a stoplight that had just changed. But she stayed where she was.

_Let your thoughts flow_, she heard Leo say in her head.

April slid appreciative eyes over the smooth curves of muscle in his arms; strong, powerful arms that had caught her, had shielded her, had protected her over and over ever since he'd met her. Arms that had worked for her, digging tirelessly to find solutions to all her problems, to all her troubles, to everything that wasn't right in her life, over and over.

He'd done nothing since he met her but say he loved her without saying it, over and over.

There was no one, no one in this world, who deserved her love more.

He had to have known she was standing there. He was ninja, always aware of his surroundings, even those behind his back, even those he couldn't see. Still, he nearly jumped out of his chair when she pressed her fingers to the knots in his shoulders, trying to knead them away.

"A-April?" he said, sounding as unsure as ever.

"You're always taking care of me, Donnie. Let me take care of you," she told him.

April heard him release a light sigh, felt him relax slightly in his chair, felt him slump as he surrendered himself to the pressure of her hands on his arms. He let her touch him in silence, as if he was afraid any noise might shatter this hallucination he was experiencing. When April finally felt the last of the tension fade from Donatello, she wrapped her arms around him from behind, pressing her hands to his plastron and her body to his warm round shell.

"I've been so stupid," she said.

"April." His voice was little more than a shaky whisper, as soft as the green light in the lab. "You missed training, sure, but I wouldn't call that— "

"I mean about us."

"Huh?"

"How long do you have to love someone before they wake up and realize it?" April asked him, uncertain if she meant Donatello loving her without her knowledge, or her loving Donatello without knowing it herself. She swiveled his chair until he faced her. "You've always taken care of me, you've always watched out for me, helped me, done everything for me. You've always loved me, and I've ignored it. I've ignored _you_."

Donnie's eyes were huge. "Well, you were kind of… busy… I mean, you had your own life, and Casey, and you seemed happy, and I want you to be happy, and I just—"

"And now I want _you_ to be happy." April moved closer, leaning her chest toward his, slipping her arms around his neck. "I'm just sorry I made you wait so long."

"You don't have to apologize to me. Not for anything, April," Donnie whispered, his arms hesitating for a second before sliding around her waist.

April glanced at the mutagen canister on the table. The light was still green. _Go. Go with the flow. _"Then can I at least tell you I love you?"

His arms jerked tighter around her. Only a squeak came from his hanging jaw.

"I love you, Donatello. I love you and I want to be with you and I want to make you as happy as you've made me."

"I'm dreaming this," he whispered. "I have to be dreaming this."

"Then let me wake you up." April lifted her face to his, and pressed her lips to his, and golden sunlight exploded in her mind.

And she envisioned the turtle she had seen under the sunlight on the bank that morning, but now its eyes were somehow blue, bluer than the river, and it winked at her as she kissed Donatello. _Perfect_, it said in her head, and swam away down the flowing Hudson.


End file.
